Front Page
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Schoenberg in Hollywood at Boston Lyric Opera
Tod Machover World Premiere
By: - Sep 14th, 2018From November 14-18, Boston Lyric Opera will bring Arnold Schoenberg back east with the world-premiere production of Tod Machover’s “Schoenberg in Hollywood.” Machover has been hailed for his compositions and also for creating new technologies that allow the boundaries of music to be taken beyond even the atonal heights Schoenberg attained.
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Pretty Woman the Movie as Musical
Hooker as Hoofer with a Heart of Gold
By: - Sep 13th, 2018The producers of Pretty Woman probably thought they had a sure fire hit. After all, the 1990 movie made Julia Roberts a major star and Richard Gere more of a star. It combines familiar elements: the hooker with a heart of gold, a Cinderella story, and the redemption of a man consumed by greed (think Scrooge).
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Chicago on Stage
Four Short Reviews
By: - Sep 13th, 2018Chicago critics Nancy Bishop and Matthew Nerber team up to cover four plays with brief reviews. This is one approach to focus on the wealth and diversity of productions in the Windy City.
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Dostoyeksky’s Crime and Punishment
At Chicago's Shattered Globe Theatre
By: - Sep 12th, 2018Dostoyeksky’s Crime and Punishment is a thriller, a slow-paced intellectualized thriller. If you haven’t read the novel since college days, Chris Hannan’s 2013 adaptation—on stage at Shattered Globe Theatre—will sneak up on you.
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The Naturalists, A World Premier
Intimately Understanding Terrorism
By: - Sep 11th, 2018The Pond is an adventuresome young producing group whose mission is to seek out bold playwrights from Ireland and the UK and give American audiences a chance to know them. Playwright Jaki McCarrick deserves wide exposure. Terrorist acts are more familiar to the Irish than Americans, Yet the impact of these events on the families of terrorists is new territory and a fascinating one in The Naturalists.
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Separate and Equal at 59E59th Street
Things Get Bad Before They Get Better
By: - Sep 10th, 2018Birmingham passed an Ordinance in May of 1951 which prohibited blacks and whites from playing games together, among other injunctions. Boys will be boys. Often in the South they are allowed to play together until they reach puberty. An empty lot with two baskets was too tempting for six boys, three black and three white, to resist. The consequences are tragic.
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A Gewurztraminer From Alsace Worth Buying
A Thriving Family Business
By: - Sep 10th, 2018Since the early 1800's, the Baur family from near Colmar, in France's Alsacian region, has owned several plots of land in this rich, limestone and clay soil area, known for Gewurztraminer (white wine). The family started bottling the wine in 1950 and now thrives with great grandson, Arnaud running the operation.
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Roberto Devereux by Gaetano Donizetti
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Sep 10th, 2018Gaetano Donizetti is recognized as a master of bel canto, with its vocal ornamentation, agility, vibrato, glissando, and precise demands on breath and register control. Although not designed as companions, he wrote operas of three queens in that style, now known as the Tudor Trilogy – Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux.
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Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci
A Twofer at San Francisco Opera
By: - Sep 10th, 2018In an unusual alteration, perhaps opera’s most famous closing line, “La commedia è finita” which is written for Canio, is spoken by Mamma Lucia, who is a character from Cavalleria. This change is the most explicit link between the two operas, and it also suggests that the speaker represents humanity, demanding an end to the destructive chaos of primitive morality evidenced in both pieces.
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Tanz im August, Berlin 2018
Dance in August Ended September 2nd
By: - Sep 09th, 2018One of the big international dance festivals, the Berlin based Tanz im August, celebrated its 30th anniversary with a thought-provoking and breath-taking array of works.
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Detroit ’67 by Dominique Morisseau
Produced by Aurora Theatre
By: - Sep 09th, 2018Dominique Morisseau’s scintillating Detroit ’67 encapsulates that tragic time through a lens that never leaves the basement of a black ghetto home over several days that July. Set near the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, this intersection would become the epicenter of death and destruction in Detroit.
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La Cage Aux Folles
At South Florida Company's New Venue
By: - Sep 08th, 2018La Cage Aux Folles marks first show at Stage Door Theatre's brand new venue in South Florida. Popular Broward County company makes a triumphant debut at its new facility. Theater company imbues Jerry Herman, Harvey Fierstein classic with glamor, humanity and heart
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Mesa Verde National Park
Visiting Southwest Colorado
By: - Sep 07th, 2018Spread over 52,000 acres on high plateaus (7,000 to 8,500 feet), Mesa Verde National Park offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Puebloans who built their homes there from around 650 until about 1300 AD.
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Do Bourbon Barrels And Zinfandel Mix
Nice Nuance
By: - Sep 07th, 2018A new group of wine drinkers prefer their Zinfandel aged in bourbon barrels. It's the small nuances of charred vanilla on the palate that makes the difference. To achieve that consistantly, makes me want to jump on the bandwagon.
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2018 Theatre Season in Connecticut
Hamilton on Tour
By: - Sep 07th, 2018Connecticut is blessed with an abundance of fine professional theaters – from the major regional companies (Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed, TheaterWorks, Westport Playhouse) to more locally oriented theaters (Ivoryton Playhouse, Playhouse on Park in West Hartford, Connecticut Repertory Theater at UConn, Sharon Playhouse, Seven Angels in Waterbury, MTC in Norwalk and ACT-CT in Ridgefield). Plus there are the major presenting house that bring in national tours – the Bushnell in Hartford, Shubert in New Haven and the Palace in Waterbury.
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Talking to Jay and the Americans
Founding Member Sandy Yaguda
By: - Sep 06th, 2018Despite occasional lineup changes, the band has always had a “Jay.” Even so, the original name that was bestowed upon them by the legendary songwriting and producing team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller did not use any of the bandmembers’ names. What's in a name? The vintage band is on tour this fall.
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Topsy Turvy on Mt. Greylock
Bascom Lodge Reading and Book Launch
By: - Sep 04th, 2018Astrid Hiemer contributed 19 photo illustrations for my fifth book of gonzo poems Topsy Turvy. On Sunday of Labor Day weekend we collaborated for a reading and book launch at historic Bascom Lodge on Mt. Greylock. There was a nice turnout on the porch. Jose, Alvin, Rick and Art joined us for the jazz dinner that followed. We stayed the night and had breakfast with hikers. It was an adventure we need to have more often.
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Seize the King at La Jolla Playhouse
World Premiere by Will Power Reconfigures Richard 111
By: - Sep 04th, 2018Young award-winning Playwright Will Power (he’s 37), has made a bold decision to roll the dice of ‘reinterpretation’ with his brassy new play “Seize the King”, directed by Jaime Castaneda, now on stage of the La Jolla Playhouses’ Potiker Theatre.
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Comic Gary Gulman Plays Rochester
At Boston's Wilbur Theatre in November
By: - Sep 04th, 2018Gary Gulman was a finalist on NBCs’ “Last Comic Standing” and regular on late night shows and other vaunted venues. The former Boston College football player and high school teacher combines bruising punchlines with intelligent humor as he tours the world. He appears at Comedy at the Carlson in Rochester, New York, September 6 to 8.
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Cartagena: Conserving Cultural Heritage
A 500-year-old Urban Jewel in the Caribbean
By: - Sep 03rd, 2018The author recently visited Cartagena, Colombia. The city is a 500-year old urban jewel in the Caribbean with a wonderful scaled and visually vibrant Old Town (el Centro Historico). It is a wonderful destination on the western edge of the Caribbean. Planning of Cartagena both in terms of preservation and new development is a challenge, but climate change and rising sea levels is threatening its cultural heritage.
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Kiss by Guillermo Calderón
At Shotgun Players Berkeley, California
By: - Sep 02nd, 2018In Guillermo Calderón’s interesting and offbeat play, Kiss, we find a kiss is not a kiss. For those expecting traditional narrative, this play might not satisfy. In addition to the script, which is highly original, the production is excellent.
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A Shayna Maidel at Timeline Theatre.
History Play by Barbara Lebow
By: - Aug 31st, 2018A Shayna Maidel (Yiddish for a pretty girl) is skillfully directed by Vanessa Stalling, The tension-filled history play by Barbara Lebow is the timely story of a family torn apart by the Holocaust and war in Europe, meeting again in 1946 New York.
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Proof by David Auburn
At Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington
By: - Aug 31st, 2018Combining mystery, surprise and old-fashioned storytelling in a compelling evening of theater, Proof, by David Auburn has won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. It is presented at Oldcastle Theatre Company in Bennington, Vermont.
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Remembering Photographer Arthur Tcholakian
Armenian Artists in America
By: - Aug 30th, 2018Richard Tashjian was the founder of the Armenian Artists Association of America a group of mostly New England artists of Armenian extraction that banded together to bring their work to the attention of the larger Boston community. With my Armenian heritage I qualified as a member and joined the group.
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Musica Marin Festival
Talking with Organizer Ruth Ellen Kahn
By: - Aug 30th, 2018Musica Marin Festival runs September 21-23, 2018. Main performing venues are St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, Old St. Hillary’s Church in Tiburon, and the exclusive private 9-acre estate in Tiburon.
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